Display of a volume of captured video or positional tracking video may enable a viewer to perceive a captured scene from any location and at any viewing angle within a viewing volume. Using the data provided by such a video system, a viewpoint can be reconstructed to provide full motion parallax and/or correct view-dependent lighting. When viewing this video with a virtual reality head-mounted display, the user may enjoy an immersive virtual presence within an environment. Such a virtual reality experience may provide six degrees of freedom and uncompromised stereoscopic perception at any interpupillary distance.
One key challenge to video with a three-dimensional viewing volume is the need for random access to portions of the video stream. Since the particular view to be rendered is user-determined in real-time, the relevant portions of the data must be rapidly located, accessed, decompressed, and/or delivered to the viewer. Known video storage methods and schemes are generally ill-suited to providing such random, real-time access.